Sechelt’s finance committee is looking to follow the Sunshine Coast Regional District’s (SCRD) lead to iron out an unexpected wrinkle caused when new owners took over Sechelt’s garbage contract.
The district rolled over its contract to Waste Management when the company bought Direct Disposal.
The contract did not include garbage collection at mobile home parks, but Direct Disposal adopted a system that allowed people living in the parks to buy tags from the district and split the fee with the municipality.
Director of finance Doug Stewart told the committee at its Aug. 8 meeting that Waste Management decided to follow “the letter of the contract” and not do any pickups at the mobile home parks unless the unit owners signed on for individual pickup service at a cost of about $307 per year.
The district felt it was better to simply add the neighbourhoods to the contract and bill homeowners as they would any other residential property owner – $216 per year.
But the move had some unintended consequences. “Unfortunately that ended up creating some payment issues for certain people in those properties,” said Stewart.
Stewart presented several options to the committee for offering relief to low or fixed income people having trouble paying their new garbage collection bills.
One of those options, available in the SCRD, would be to provide a solid waste fee reduction based on any unused portion of the additional homeowner’s grant, left over after the grant is already used to reduce the taxes to zero. According to Stewart, 70 to 80 SCRD property owners a year typically claim the deduction.
“For the first time in a long time I actually like the SCRD’s solution,” said Mayor Bruce Milne, who chairs the committee. “It exactly covers the issue that we’re dealing with – those people on a very low income who are receiving the additional homeowner grant.”
Milne said the SCRD approach would help the people impacted. “As long as we’re going to use a fee for service as opposed to a tax levy, that’s the one way of providing a bit of potential relief… I think it’s the best road to go.”
The committee unanimously recommended a new bylaw based on the SCRD example be drafted for review. Councillors will also have to decide at some point if they are going to offer a refund to those who’ve already paid for their 2018 garbage service.
